More Transmissible BA.2 Omicron Variant Achieves Global Domination: Now Accounts For About 75% Of Cases Sequenced Worldwide, Per WHO
deadline.com“We are seeing an increase in the proportion of BA.2 that is detected,” warned the World Health Organization’s technical lead on Covid-19, Dr.
Maria Van Kerkhove. “Of the sequences that are available, about 75% are BA.2 and 25% of those are BA.1,” which is the original Omicron strain.Just one month ago, WHO released a report on BA.2 that showed the strain accounted for 21.5% of all new Omicron cases analyzed worldwide in the first week of February.
That means in one month, it’s grown more than 2X, displacing BA.1 as is did so.“Studies have shown that BA.2 has a growth advantage over BA.1,” according to a WHO analysis, possibly because it lodges higher in the respiratory tract, and so infection can result from lighter exposures.
The “difference in transmissibility appears to be much smaller than, for example, the difference between BA.1 and Delta,” says the WHO report, but it is an advantage.In the U.S., where BA.2 has been a non-factor up until now, sequences of the variant have doubled each of the past few weeks, and it now accounts for 23% of all positive tests sequenced.What’s more, the rise in BA.2 cases is happening across the U.S.
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